Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña (10 January 1880-3 November 1940) was Prime Minister of Spain from 14 October 1931 to 6 September 1933, succeeding Juan Bautista Aznar Cabanas and preceding Alejandro Lerroux, and again from 19 February to 10 May 1936, succeeding Manuel Portela Valladares and preceding Santiago Casares Quiroga. From 10 May 1936 to 3 March 1939, he was also President of the Second Spanish Republic, succeeding Niceto Alcala-Zamora and preceding the dictator Francisco Franco.

Biography
Manuel Azaña Diaz was born in Alcala de Henares, Community of Madrid, Spain on 10 January 1880, and he graduated from the University of Zaragoza in 1897 with a law degree. He joined the Reformist Party of Spain, and he worked as a journalist at the time of World War I. Azaña opposed Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorship as a journalist, and he was named Minister of War when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1931. From 1931 to 1933 and in 1936, Azaña served as Prime Minister, and he pursued major republican reforms. He reduced the power and influence of the Catholic Church in Spain, and he expanded state-operated secular schools. Azaña was not enthusiastic about reforms, however, as he was a "middle-class republican". In 1933, conservative and centrist parties won several Cortes seats in response to Azaña's anti-clerical reforms, and he was ordered to resign due to his status as an enemy of both the far-left and the right. In 1936, he returned to the premiership for less than three months, and he was elected President of Spain that same year. Azaña presided over the Republican war effort during the Spanish Civil War, and he repeatedly sought peace terms with Emilio Mola's fascist Falange party. In 1939, he fled to France as the Falangists began to defeat the Republicans, refusing to return to Madrid with the rest of the government; his flight to France was seen as desertion by both the nationalists and republicans. He died in Montauban, Vichy France on 3 November 1940, and his body was draped with the flag of a sympathetic Mexico instead of the republican flag, which was banned by Philippe Petain's fascist government.